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ki.Scribe | ____/// luminoushadow |||______

Life is activity and with that, chaos. When we come into excess, there’s a process of desensitization, a numbing indifference where pain and pleasure fails to trigger the necessary stimuli to produce feedback: a signal that affirms we are alive. this insatiable void consumes the very spark of motivation and compels us to pursue life for only for the sake of “the thrill”, at all costs, to exhilarate oneself in order to feel that fractionated stimulus streaming through our bodies, and waking us from the slumber of monotonous routine; as though it were a force of salvation, an obligatory reward for none other deserved, or the long awaited light at the end of a dark tunnel.

During extended times of deprivation, the hunger becomes too overwhelming to not appease, too unbearable to ignore, and could only be described as “sensory death” in a manner of zombification. But why must I succumb to the reign of chaos and be a servant of his bidding? Why should I subject myself to the whims of the world, become a slave of its mechanical clockwork, a pipeline of sludge through which flows the putridity of the higher echelon, a broken canteen that is unable to retain the nectar of life and surrenders everything to oblivion?

Why is my reliance held by the hands of substances pre-supposed to render my world in a wider spectrum? Why am I so adamantly fixated on paths of effortlessness to propel me to new heights when everything in life worth living for requires effort? Only in transient passing can I embrace love if I cannot with due effort offer her tantamount that which she bestows upon me. How long can hold on to friends and family if the only things I have to offer is use and abuse? How far will I succeed in my profession or any other worldly endeavor if I refuse to expend that which is necessary to pursue my desires? What heights can I ultimately attain if my roots are so tightly bound to the earth as such that it prevents me to shake from my state of stagnation?

When I use any vehicle for such ends—to elevate us above the insufferable reality–I stake my life at its mercy as a passenger of an aircraft taken to the skies: I relinquish my control in the take-off, landing, and all events in between. If I can fly by my own wings, then I can more readily ascend and descend with grace, adjusting for the turbulence with consideration to my own body, and my own livelihood; in this state, I am the vehicle and the passenger, I choose the destination, and wherever the journey takes me, it will be of mine own volition.

Such an innocuous temptress is she who promises to lift my spirits, erase from my memory all pains, and empower me with irresistible charisma to woo the toughest of sirens…but I don’t need her. I will not allow her to be the surrogate of my personality, to bear arms in my stead in circumstances where I may despair, and to be the glue that bonds me to others in the social exchange.

Though I will not be repulsed by her invitation in heeding social graces and respectful observance of courtesy, without shame and fear of repudiation, still I can easily decline out of self-respect and the trust that courtesy is paved as a two-way street; those that drive on the wrong side of the road out of negligence or purely spite, they certainly don’t belong in my social contract.

She is not inherently evil, nor is she pure. She is who she is and I tread with caution when I’m in her affections. My love for her is superficial and though she penetrates my veins, she does not control my thoughts, my actions, or my will. As long as my lust for her is a stranger to addiction, then she remains as an idle tool upon a shelf that is animated only by the power my command. I am her vice and she is to me as courage is to a brave man.

Freedom is always bartered at a price: money, blood, and sacrifice. For whatever reasons born of our need to be free, it is understood that when humanity is stricken by the chains of bondage and oppressed beyond the threshold of sufferance, the collective body will cease to evolve. Incontrovertibly, society as we know it will regress from light into gradations of grey and eventually darkness. But when one rises to challenge an oppressor many times his magnitude, he stands in the light of humanity and barters for freedom with his life–to liberate humanity from the enslavement of the mind and body. Thus, it is our duty to bring light into the shadowy prisons that silence those who stood and have fallen to the opposition. We become the substitute of their voice, the surrogate of their strength, and the soul of their struggle; for without, our struggles will resolve into an exercise of futility.